


look for the girl with kaleidoscope eyes

by philthestone



Series: through this, our hearts sustained [2]
Category: Brooklyn Nine-Nine (TV)
Genre: F/M, Gen, THE FAM - Freeform, Unplanned Pregnancy, also Hitchcock and Scully are the weird uncles ofc, and u know, anyway i needed to write a giant fic where jake introduces captain holt to comic books, anyway theyre married so it was gonna be planned at some point just. not now, ill stop rambling in the tags pls forgive, is this in character? who knows, listen. they just all love each other so much
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-11
Updated: 2016-04-11
Packaged: 2018-06-01 16:25:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 17,044
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6527452
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/philthestone/pseuds/philthestone
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's the hottest day in July and Amy is eight months and three days pregnant when Jake introduces Captain Holt to <em>X-Men</em>.</p>
            </blockquote>





	look for the girl with kaleidoscope eyes

**Author's Note:**

> whoo okay this story is gonna have SO MANY NOTES that i'm putting them all at the end. i rewarded myself for finishing my first exam by taking a break to upload this, and somehow despite its obscene length i got through formatting it fairly quickly. i'm still a little iffy on how the Arc plays out, but this story and the affiliated headcanons are very dear to me and I'd greatly appreciate feedback.
> 
> finally, this was pretty much written in collaboration with my dear friend @weaslayyy, who is also here on ao3 and writes The Best Ever Stories.
> 
> reviews are endless smooshy kisses and vanilla bean frappuchinos, which I myself aren't mad about but have on good authority that they're neat during the summer. xxo

It’s ten thirty pm on a Wednesday night when Jake walks out of the kitchen to the sight of Amy fast asleep on Captain Holt’s shoulder, the muted sounds of Luke Skywalker saying, “ _I’m a Jedi, like my father before me,_ ” playing on the television in front of them.

Later, he’ll swear up and down that he doesn’t (inexplicably and irritatingly and _God, I’m a grown man who actually does his taxes now, what kind of nonsense is this_ ) suddenly get a funny kind of lump in his throat and one or two tears in his eyes.

(He does. Kind of. Maybe.)

(It’s okay, though, because he stays in the kitchen until he pulls it together again, and no one is ever the wiser.)

**

Jake’s not quite sure how it began, but he does know that were a timestamp absolutely necessary, the complete and total collapse of their air conditioning system on one of the hottest days in July would probably be about right.

“Al- _right_ , thank you everyone for gathering in the briefing room for this super important time-sensitive meeting, the nature of which will be disclosed in _juuust_ a min –”

“Is this about why Amy came into work this morning?” asks Terry, looking concerned. “Because we all love to see her, but a police precinct really isn’t the best place for an already stressed-out, eight-month-along pregnant lady.”

“Hey,” says Jake, raising his eyebrows severely. “Seven months and eighteen days.”

“I have a guy in holding,” says Rosa, “so this better be quick.”

“Your shirt is on inside-out, boo,” says Gina, which Charles follows up immediately with,

“And you still look great as always, Jakey, like your own fashion statement –”

Gina silences him by kicking her flip-flop clad foot up on the table and pulling out a bottle of teal nail polish.

“ _Okay,_ ” says Jake, “here’s the thing. The air conditioning at our apartment broke this morning and it’s like a million degrees outside and the dumb insurance company isn’t gonna pay for it and the guy who came in to _look_ at it just called and told me that it’s not gonna be fixed until, like, Saturday morning, and _canAmystaywithoneofyouuntilthen_ , you’re all the best people in the whole wide world and I’m desperate, here?”

(Against his better judgement, it comes out all in one breath.)

“Where is Amy?” asks Terry, leaning forward against the table. Jake, still standing at the front of the room, opens his mouth. And then closes it. And then lifts forward slightly on the soles of his shoes.

“In the bathroom?”

Rosa snorts; Terry closes his eyes and exhales, leaning back in his seat; Charles nods and Gina makes a face at her toes.

“Oh, no,” says Terry. “You know she’s gonna be mad.”

“Uh huh,” says Jake, rocking back on his feet. “So, any takers? Going once, going _twice_ –”

“Jake,” says Terry.

“Well, it’s a no from Rosa,” says Gina, blowing on her pinky toe.

“Is it okay if I take the leftover strudel in the fridge?” asks Scully.

“You don’t know what I’m gonna say,” growls Rosa. And then, turning to Jake: “For the record, it’s no.”

“Ugh,” says Gina, brightly painted lips pulling back into a grimace. “ _Charles_. You made me mess up my paint!”

“I’m on the other side of the room!”

“Your existence –”

“Oh, wow, there’s some leftover banana bread in here, too!”

“Guys –”

“ _Jake_.”

Terry has his Stern Sergeant Look on, leaning forward in his chair with his hands pressed against the table.

Jake crumbles.

“I know? I _know_ , it’s just she’s really annoyed that she doesn’t feel like she’s able to make any decisions for herself and I swear if this were any other situation I _would not be doing this_ but it’s so ridiculously hot in our apartment, Sarge, it’s _so_ hot, and Amy’s always warm and uncomfortable all the time _anyway_ and I have five minutes before she comes back from the bathroom to find her a place to stay because she’s not supposed to be stressed and –”

“Jake,” says Terry again, and Jake realizes that he’s stood up and his hand is held out in front of him and oops, maybe Jake was on the verge of hyperventilating.

So, okay. That might be because they’re on a bit of a tight budget. Which Jake thinks is terribly unfair because they’ve been so responsible, okay – _he’s_ been so responsible, they’d had money saved and he hasn’t bought anything dumb and frivolous in _months_ (the t-shirt that can play Darth Vader’s theme song for you every time you walk into a room is a necessity, okay, and doesn’t count – and neither do the flowers he sometimes grabs from Mrs. Huang’s bodega at the edge of their block, because she always gives him a discount anyway). But, as Amy has told him upwards of five million times by now, planning for a baby is exceptionally hard when the whole thing was inherently un-planned.

(Jake doesn’t like using the word “accident”, because that makes it sound synonymous to “unwanted” and “bad”, and he might be almost-panicking in the briefing room at nine thirty am on a Thursday, but he also doesn’t think that he’s been this ridiculously overwhelmed and excited in his entire life. He’s been trying to parse the thing in his head, how he’s feeling, because that’s a healthy adult thing to do, and so far he’s come to the conclusion that the whole situation feels like a real-life emotional embodiment one of those super kickass scenes in action movies where the hero and heroine walk off into the sunset with the explosion behind them and live happily ever after.)

(Or something. Explosions are probably not a safe thing to have around babies or pregnant Amys, but Jake’ll have to double check Amy’s new best friend; _Baby Does and Don’ts: A Comprehensive Anthology_ again, just to make sure.)

Anyway. He’s trying really hard to write the sergeant’s exam before the baby’s due date, because that would solve a couple problems or ten, and he can’t remember the last time he went to sleep earlier than one in the morning. Which, truth be told, usually wouldn’t be a problem because Jake _lives_ in the no-sleep-zone, baby – but suddenly, somehow, with everything else on top of it, it is.

And now the stupid air conditioning is broken and maybe if they stretched it they could afford a hotel but the whole thing is stressing Jake out more than should probably be legal. In at _least_ three states, Jake thinks, if nothing else.

(Also, he has maybe two minutes before Amy comes out of the bathroom and runs into Captain Holt, which will herald the inevitable, “Detective Santiago, I’m sure you know very well that a police precinct is not a conducive environment for the health of an expectant mother,” doing his Disappointed Holt Voice, and Amy will do her pinch-y Upset Santiago Face, and Jake really wishes his Mom weren’t out of town so Amy could just go stay with her and he wouldn’t be almost-hyperventilating in the briefing room at nine thirty am on a Thursday.

He told himself he was gonna be _chill_ about this, damn it.)

Terry’s still standing, his tie slating with the forward arch of his shoulders, both hands now held up in front of Jake. His expression is smooth and his voice level, and Jake forces himself to listen to it.

“C’mon, man. Take a deep breath.”

Jake swallows, and takes a deep breath, and levels his hands out in front of him.

“I know,” says Jake. “I’m cool, I’m fine. Right, I’m. Handling it. Just.” He tries for a smile. It’s maybe three fifths successful.

(He wouldn’t be sure, he almost failed sixth grade math, with the fractions and stuff, and _oh my God, he almost failed sixth grade math, how is he gonna teach his kid –_ )

“I’d be happy to –” starts Charles, but Rosa speaks over him.

“You’ve got three dogs, Charles,” in a way that automatically seems to convey the words, _sit down, Boyle_ , despite the fact that Charles is not, in fact, standing up.

Jake swallows and looks at Terry.

“Our house is under renovations,” he says, and his hands seem to angle up a little again as though to forestall any returning panic. “Sharon and the kids are at her Mom’s right now. I wish I could help, Jake, but that’s gonna be no better than here.”

Jake nods again, sticking his hands on his hips so that he stops grabbing at his police badge, and turns to the other table. “Gina –”

“Mmm, nuh-uh. I love you both, babe, but I’m not letting any gross baby stuff in my abode.”

“The baby isn’t even born yet!”

“No can-do.”

“But –”

“Perhaps I can help,” comes a voice from behind Jake, and in later retellings of the Great Pregnancy Saga, Jake will refute any claims pertaining to his starting violently and smashing his knee into the front table.

“Hello, sir,” manages Jake, his eyes watering from the pain of Smashed Knee. “Isn’t the weather so great today? I think it’s great, it’s so great, we were just –”

“Amy can stay with me,” says Captain Holt, speaking over him. Jake freezes in place, his hands still clutching his maimed appendage; on the other side of the room, the sounds of Gina (having just finished the fingernails on her left hand) blowing on drying nail polish fill up the silence.

Finally:

“Nice,” says Rosa.

“There you go,” says Terry. “Problem solved.”

“Clearly,” says Charles, “that’s the best idea so far.”

“Hitchcock, what did I say about smiling at me?” says Gina, not looking up from her fingernails.

“Sorry,” say Hitchcock and Scully, in sync.

Captain Holt continues to look at Jake. His expression is unfathomable (a word that Jake learned only last week, because Amy insisted that it was _unfathomable_ that someone somewhere was paying four hundred and sixty two US dollars for a papoose), but that’s really not saying much about anything, because Captain Holt’s expression is pretty much always unfathomable.

“Are,” says Jake, “are you sure?”

Captain Holt raises an eyebrow. “Peralta, a police precinct is _not_ a conducive environment for an expectant –”

“No, I, I know, sir. Um. I just. She wouldn’t be – _we_ wouldn’t be – I mean, I don’t want to impose, or, or anything, and I’m sure Amy’d –”

“You’re sure I’d what?”

Jake doesn’t start this time, but his shoulders sag downwards, and he’s about to concede defeat and accept that the stars of every possible universe enjoy aligning themselves against them, including but not limited to those stars controlling air conditioning units and the weather in July of the year two-thousand twenty. He lets his hand lean on the podium to his left and exhales, looking down at his sneakers.

“Good morning, Amy,” says Captain Holt, while Jake bites down on his lip and looks up again. She’s standing in the doorway, her dark hair knotted in a messy bun behind her head as it was that morning. The soft cotton flower-print sundress that her Mom gave her last week is fluttering around her knees, hanging loosely over the swell of her belly. Her detective badge is in her hand, because of course it is, and Jake can sense the tiredness in her shoulders from across the room and he can’t even _begin_ to imagine what it feels like to be growing a tiny human being inside you, but Amy narrows her eyes – standing there with no makeup and messy hair and clutching her detective badge like some sort of amulet to ward off the limitations that pregnancy has placed around her body – and he thinks that she’s probably the strongest, most amazing human being he’s ever known in his life. He doesn’t say this out loud, thankfully, but bites down on his tongue, because both Amy and Captain Holt would probably deem that Unprofessional in a Workplace Environment. “I was just suggesting,” Captain Holt continues, “that perhaps it would be most beneficial for you to temporarily stay in a living space that has a functional air conditioner and is devoid of dangerous weaponry.”

Amy’s eyes widen. Her mouth opens, probably milliseconds away from saying something along the lines of, _Jake, what did you say,_ and scrunching her nose up in a frown.

“Look –” starts Jake, lifting his hands in front of him.

“Oh, no,” says Amy, head shaking frantically. “Captain. I could _never_ – there’s no need, I’m completely, I’m totally, it’s, you, this is a _fine_ situation, sir, you’re –”

“Nonsense,” says Captain Holt. Amy’s mouth remains open, still making funny spluttering noises. Jake grins at her encouragingly, and then – “ _Both_ of you may stay in our guest room until the repairs on your air conditioning system are complete. I can assure you, we have very adequate room temperature controls.”

Jake blinks. Amy’s mouth slowly slides shut.

Captain Holt looks at them both, his eyebrow raising a hint further. Across the room, Gina wiggles her now-teal fingers happily, and Scully passes Hitchcock a piece of banana bread. Terry’s still standing; Rosa’s feet are propped up on the table, her elbow resting on Charles’s shoulder.

“Thank you, Captain,” says Amy, her voice only slightly more highly-pitched than usual, and Jake might not be any good at math, but he can damn well read his wife’s reactions from across rooms, and a near-invisible tension seems to have bled out of Amy’s frame.

“Whoooh,” says Jake finally, feeling his mouth tug into a grin. “Partyin’ it up at Captain Holt’s house.”

“Peralta, please stop talking.”

“Yes, sir.”

**

In the twelve years of their partnership (slash romantical dating relationship slash super awesome married life), Jake’s come to learn that Amy is very thorough. In fact, she takes pride in her thoroughness.

Which means that Amy Santiago has contingency plans for the contingency plans of her contingency plans, and that therefore, it’s totally reasonable for the both of them to have spent roughly a week laughing at the two lines on the pregnancy test mocking them in all their peed-on glory.

Eventually, they realized that it was real. Eventually, Amy identified the redball that they worked the previous month, and the full two days spent (barely) sleeping in the precinct pouring over case files and getting updates on the location of a missing eight-year-old little boy, and the consequent lowering of “take birth control” on the list of priorities, and Jake, over a slice of pizza that he had to quickly stow away because pizza was apparently now on the List of Pregnancy No-No Foods, solemnly recalled the officially-named “sleepy life-affirming sex” that happened sometime after they finally made it to their apartment again. All of a sudden: they were having a baby.

(“Sleepy LAS for short,” Jake had said, nodding and tapping his non-pizza-y finger against his temple. “So like, this is totally the psychotic child kidnapper’s fault, because otherwise we wouldn’t have worked that case.” He paused, frowning. “Wait, should I be talking about child kidnappers right now?”

“Pizza,” managed Amy, “Oh, God,” and ran over to the sink to empty her stomach.)

Particularly in the first several months, Amy is really, really tired all the time, something that Jake knows is driving her absolutely nuts. She falls asleep over case files, and has difficulty waking up in the morning chipper and bright with her alarm, and is always, always fatigued.

(“Who needs this!” she tells the kitchen table in a frustrated voice one night, her buggy nerd glasses perched on her nose because it’s their day off and contacts have officially become overrated. “Who asked for this! It’s unnecessary, okay, it’s, like, thanks, peanut-sized person, I know you’re in there! I love you! I don’t need to be tired all the time as a reminder!”

Jake says, “Actually, I think it’s a walnut by now,” and stirs the spaghetti, but he hums sympathetically first, which is likely what stops Amy from sticking her tongue out at him.)

She’s sitting at the kitchen table, now, with a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet open in front of her, mouth pulled down into an expression Jake’s come to identify as Determined Santiago Face #26: stubborn, but irritable and tired, as opposed to, say, Determined Santiago Face #5, which usually means she’s about to sweep all up into a campaign that likely involves Christmas cookies or a alphabetically-ordered list of possible paint colours that could be used for the renovation of the janitor’s supply closet. 

Jake drops his bag down in the hallway and shrugs off his jacket, and then goes and puts his chin on her shoulder. He can see the refrigerator across from where she's sitting, with the pink, pealing sticky note in the top corner that reads _just married_ and used to be stuck to their front door, and the scattered fridge magnets that usually read dumb things like "J hearts A" because they are literally, Jake has come to realize, the lamest and/or sappiest human beings on the planet.

(He doesn't really mind, though.)

Amy's shoulder is soft and more comfortable than shoulders usually are, and Jake narrows his eyes at the computer screen.

“Nineteen ninety-five crime statistics,” Jake reads aloud, his cheek brushing against her earlobe. “Wow, this sounds so fun.”

“I told Captain Holt that I’d organize some of the precinct’s old files,” she tells him, not taking her eyes off her computer. “I’m doing research.”

“Ames.”

“I know.”

“ _Ames_.”

“Please,” she says, turning in her seat so that Jake’s chin is forced to slip off of her shoulder. She’s biting her lip and wearing one of his really really old plaid shirts over a tank-top, the one with the hole in the shoulder, and she exhales in this funny stuttering way. “I just – really need something to do.”

(They’ve had this conversation before: once, when Captain Holt asked her to give him a date for when her leave would start, and once at two-thirty in the morning when Amy couldn’t sleep and decided she wanted to power through five chapters of _Eating for Two: The Beginner’s Guide to Baby-Friendly Five-Minute Meals_. Jake’s still not sure how he managed to get his point across still mostly asleep, but Amy put the book away and let her head rest on his shoulder, so he figured he did something right.)

Jake lets himself drop into the chair beside her and taps his foot on the floor, still in his sneakers and smelling like the coffee Charles accidentally knocked onto him that morning. Amy looks down, to where Jake’s taken her fingers between his own, the silver of their wedding rings bumping against each other. The tiny diamond on Amy’s ring finger glints in the kitchen lighting, extra-bright beside the tarnished plastic of the one dollar engagement ring she gave Jake, that morning in the bullpen almost two years ago. He’d told her that he was never taking it off, then, and he’s not sure if when he said it, he was fully conscious of the fact that he was one hundred percent serious, but it’s still on his finger and looking more grey than silver now. Last week, he almost lost it down the shower drain and panicked for a full three minutes.

(He also almost lost his _actual_ wedding ring, which contributed to the panic thing, but still.)

Jake lets his thumb rub gently over Amy’s knuckle.

“You okay, Santiago?” he asks, after a moment, his eyes coming back up to look at her face.

He sees the corner of her lip twitch, and he smiles, mouth curling upwards gently; encouraging.

“I’m _happy_ ,” she says, slowly, her words breathless and tight in a way that Jake thinks means she’s being very careful about what is coming out of her mouth. “Jake, I’m happy. I’m so, so happy. I _really_ don’t want you to think I’m not happy.”

“Are you _okay_ , though,” he says, fingers tightening around her hand. Even now, _even now_ , there’s a tiny, tiny traitorous part of his heart that drops out in moments like this, that thinks, _orange soda_ , and he kind of hates that he’s so incredibly terrified of that fact that he’s going to be a dad soon and he already loves the eggplant-sized person in Amy’s tummy more than he can fully articulate to himself, and that’s always been his problem, hasn’t it, loving too much too soon and always not being good enough at the end of the day.

He feels Amy squeeze his fingers back, and he watches her eyes flick back up to meet his.

“I’m really tired all the time,” she says, “and I can’t eat pizza anymore, which sucks.”

“Super sucks,” says Jake, one percent because that means that he can now no longer eat pizza, either, but ninety-nine percent because seeing Amy unhappy, even over something as trivial as a pizza-less existence, is slowly becoming his least favorite activity – somewhere on the same level as skinny-dipping in a lake full of bees and doing paperwork.

“Also,” says Amy, “I really wish people would stop making decisions for me.”

“I’m –” starts Jake, but she cuts him off, shaking her head.

“No, no, it’s not – you’re – you’re amazing, Jake, you’re so much help, I just. I know I need to take it easy.”

Jake swallows, giving her fingers another squeeze. “Kind of, yeah.”

“I just – you know – I just need. We made a _schedule_ ,” she finally manages. “We have so much stuff to do before it gets here? And, and I just, I need. I need to know that this isn’t changing everything, that _I’m_ not – not changing? I don’t. I don’t know, Jake. I’m so happy but I’m so scared and I _really_ don’t want you to think that I’m not happy.”

“So you’re researching nineteen ninety-five crime statistics,” Jake supplies, nudging her sock-clad foot with his shoe.

“Sort of. Maybe. Yeah.”

Jake grins.

“We have so much stuff to do before it gets here,” he says. “Title of our sex tape.”

“Oh my _God_ –”

“And,” says Jake, over her burst of laughter, the same burst that’s made the knot in his chest loosen and his heart rate return to something closer to _excited_ than _terrified_. “And, um.” He looks at the crooked grin on Amy’s face, lopsided in such a way that makes him sure she doesn’t want to be laughing at his dumb joke. “I’m, I’m really, glad. That you’re happy. Because I’m – I’m really happy too.”

His voice comes out a lot softer than he intends it, almost as though his voice is worried that if it gets too loud, it’ll scare him off from saying it, and Amy tugs at their intertwined hands, letting them rest on the curve of her belly. Jake’s lips curve into a smile, wide and toothy, involuntarily.

“Yeah?” she says, a soft, breathless laugh puffing out of her chest.

“Yeah.” He lets his finger trace a shape against her shirt. “I bet I’m, like, floppity bajillion times happier than you.”

“Please, Peralta. No way. You’re an amateur at this happiness business.”

“Your _face_ is an amateur.”

They look at each other, for about ten full seconds.

Amy’s laughter is bright and full and fills up the small kitchen space, intermingling with his own. It’s late and they’re both exhausted and she’s half-wheezing half-snorting and he’s probably worst. There’s a tiny little knot, too, at the bottom of his gut; twisting a little and tightening at the sight of the teeth-torn corners of Amy’s lips, but their hands are still pressed against her tummy and the baby kicks, and Jake’s heart is suddenly five sizes too big for his chest, knocking the breath out of his lungs and making the tips of his fingers tingle with disbelief.

**

(He runs down to the little bodega at the edge of their block an hour later, with strict instructions to buy three cans of chickpeas, a tub of Nutella and some packaged spinach – he still can’t understand how any of those things are acceptable when pizza isn’t – and he’s grabbing at the spinach when he suddenly realizes that his hands are shaking, just a little bit. He inhales sharply and closes his fist over the plastic packaging, tossing it into his basket and dumping his motley assortment onto the counter in front of Mrs. Huang. His fingers fumble with his dollar bills and he stuffs his hand into his pocket the minute she takes the money from him.

“You are alright?” asks Mrs. Huang, closing the cash register and narrowing her eyes at him. “The shoulders look tense.”

“I’m fine,” says Jake, frowning slightly at the packets of cigarettes lining the back of the cash register. _Adrenaline’s wearing off_ , his brain supplies, which has pretty much been his excuse every alternating evening for the past seven months, and he swallows against the jittery feeling in his chest.

 _I really don’t want you to think that I’m not happy._

She looks so tired, sometimes, and three binders and five baby books and one lecture from Terry later he’s not sure what on Earth he’s supposed to be doing to help.

“Hmph,” says Mrs. Huang, handing him the bags with all the brusque efficiency of a sixty-year-old woman who comes up to Jake’s shoulder. “Don’t drop the chickpeas.”

Jake lets the muggy night air fill his lungs and wishes it was colder, so maybe the jitters in his chest would get quashed.

When he gets home, he grins at Amy and pulls out the Nutella and spinach both at once, and he thinks his hands steady a little when her face lights up and she lets out a delighted groan, hugging the spinach close to her face – crinkly plastic package and all.)

**

It would be nice if Jake could say that sleeping over at Captain Holt’s house isn’t weird.

It’s _so_ weird.

In lieu of forestalling any weirdness, Jake promises (loudly and with much enthusiasm) that they’ll behave the moment Captain Holt opens the door to him holding an overnight backpack in his arms, Amy standing beside him and doing an admirable job of not complaining about back pain for the fifth time that day. Holt says, “I’m not sure that gives me any comfort, Jake,” and on the other side of the door, Kevin looks pained.

Kevin’s expression softens, though, when Amy asks, nerves tightening the ends of her words, if she could use the bathroom quickly.

“I’ll show you where the guest room is,” Kevin offers, and then: “Do you need anything in particular, Amy? Please make yourself feel at home.”

Jake raises his eyebrows at Captain Holt; it’s exaggerated and a little ridiculous, because Amy and Kevin aren’t looking, but Holt simply raises an eyebrow back – something Jake decides can be translated to, _Peralta, don’t think I’m above making you sleep with the dog and giving Santiago the guest room all to herself._

(He asks Holt the next day, if his eyebrow-reading skills have any accuracy at all. Captain Holt doesn’t look up from the reports he’s reading.

“Don’t be ridiculous, Peralta. Cheddar sleeps in our room.”)

It really shouldn’t be weird, except Jake keeps thinking that maybe it is a little weird, and Amy definitely thinks it’s weird, and –

Well. It’s _weird._

Amy spends ten minutes panicking about whether or not she’s allowed to abstain from wearing pants to bed; Jake gets maybe three hours of solid sleep as a result of getting intermittently kicked in the knee by a pants-less Amy, who firmly declares back massages to be something you _cannot do_ when sleeping over at your boss’s house (Jake’s not entirely sure that she isn’t just saying that so she’ll have an excuse to kick him); and in the morning, between fumbling with the strange-looking butter knife, weird stories about Kevin’s grad students, and Amy having to rush to the bathroom after Captain Holt uncovers his bowl of oatmeal, Jake thinks that “weird” doesn’t even begin to cut it.

(Kevin definitely notices the blob of jam drip onto Jake’s pant leg. Jake thinks that the general consensus at the table is that he’s probably going to be an absolutely terrible dad, which he’s not entirely sure _isn’t_ untrue. Whatever, though, right? He and the baby can bond over spilled food, or something. Amy might not mind.)

Amy’s still in the bathroom when Captain Holt clears his throat.

“It’s time for Peralta and I to head to work. This has been an excellent breakfast and morning, and I –”

“Thought it was as awkward and weird as we did?” says Jake, doing finger guns in Kevin’s direction. “Yep, that’s totally true. Good call. Hey, Kev, can you pass the sugar bowl?”

“You have … already added three spoonfuls of sugar to your coffee,” says Kevin, blinking.

“I know,” says Jake cheerfully.

Captain Holt clears his throat again; Jake bites his bottom lip and wishes the beautifully-tiled floor would open up and swallow him whole.

“I was going to say that I am assuming that Amy is comfortable with spending the rest of the day here,” says Holt slowly, raising his eyebrows at Jake. “Your air conditioning is still non-functional, is it not?”

“Oh,” says Jake. “Oh, yeah, um. It’s just, we wouldn’t wanna impose –”

“It’s no problem at all,” says Kevin, holding the newspaper in front of him as one would a shield and looking like a cat is crawling up his most prized curtains. “I would – ah – appreciate the company during the day.”

“Cool,” says Jake. “Cool cool cool cool cool, sure, no doubt.”

“We really should be going,” says Captain Holt.

“Thank you for your endless and unsurpassed hospitality!” says Amy’s muffled voice through the bathroom door.

**

Jake spends the whole day – from the car ride to the precinct all the way through lunch, when the mustard leaks out of his sandwich and onto his tie, inclusive of the moment where he almost gets so caught up in the Merrilax murder that he forgets that his air conditioner’s broken and he’s bunking at his boss’s house – feeling phenomenally awkward and not quite knowing why. Of course, there’s always a bit of anxiety kicking around his chest these days anyway, but this time in particular, its origin seems to be evading him. It might possibly have to do with the fact that Captain Holt lets out a nigh-imperceptible sigh at the sight of mustard stain on Jake’s front, but then again, Jake isn’t certain that his overtired brain isn’t imagining things. Disapproving Captain Holt Sighs do sound like something that Jake’s subconscious would hallucinate now, just to screw with him.

He feels awkward all the way up until Captain Holt opens the front door and they find themselves in the kitchen doorway, staring.

Amy’s at the counter chopping vegetables; Kevin is at the stove, stirring a pot of tomato sauce and talking about the Renaissance Period.

Jake blinks. And then stares.

(Captain Holt also stares, but perhaps marginally less obviously.)

“Um,” says Jake. “Hi guys.”

“Did you have an enjoyable day?” asks Captain Holt slowly, still in the doorway to the kitchen.

There are windows lining the side of the kitchen – big windows, letting in lots of the dwindling sunlight outside, the purples and pinks of the sunset leaking in and painting the windowsill above the far counter where Amy’s sat. The dark red wood of the cupboards is clean and polished and the counters are marble and it looks so very different from their kitchen nook at home, with the little rack of spices in the corner decorated with colourful labels and the mismatched, mostly-chipped mugs tucked away in the cupboard (and too often left outside sitting on any and all flat surfaces, half-full of tea or coffee or the occasional orange soda). There’s not any dingy, flower-patterned dishrag hanging from the dishwasher handle, either; instead, there’s a simple white towel sitting in a neat heap by Amy’s left elbow on the counter.

“Amy’s chopping vegetables,” says Jake, blinking twice. “You’re chopping vegetables,” he tells Amy.

“Yes,” says Kevin, wiping his hand on another, equally white dishtowel and giving Amy a smile. “She’s quite proficient in her technique. Very meticulous.”

Amy grins; a big, blossoming fullbright Santiago Smile, the kind that always makes Jake’s heart trip over itself. Her hair has come a little loose from its ponytail and her eyes are bright, if a little tired, and she’s sitting on a stool by the counter with a big chopping knife in hand, all the vegetables in colour-coordinated piles on the counter.

She looks so _comfortable_.

“Kevin’s making Italian food,” she says. And then, with a slight tint to her cheeks: “I’m helping!”

There’s an ease to her movements, to her posture, that was not there this morning; that, to use an oft-heard Kevinism, _indeed_ , has lately not been there anywhere other than the relative comfort of their own apartment and perhaps on occasion their parents’ respective homes.

Without thinking, Jake steps forward and presses his lips to her forehead, a gesture that earns him a poke in the collarbone and a further tinting of her cheeks.

“ _Jake_ ,” she says in a softsoft voice, only very slightly disapproving. If Jake wasn’t too busy grinning down at her, the persistent discomfort in his chest dissipating for the first time that day, he’d have noticed Captain Holt and Kevin smiling at each other over Amy’s shoulder, Kevin’s eyes flitting back down to the pasta sauce, a crinkle decorating the corners of his eyes.

It’s when Captain Holt encourages Amy to wash her hands and go relax on the couch while he and Jake help Kevin set the table that Jake slips back into the kitchen, gathering a handful of silverware, that he takes a deep breath and hesitates in front of Kevin, who is retrieving a bowl from one the kitchen cupboards to pour the ravioli into.

“Um,” says Jake. “Hey, so … I just. Thanks for, like. Keeping Amy company all day.” He feels his fingers curl involuntarily around the silverware and shrugs as Kevin straightens up, holding a ceramic bowl. “She – I dunno, I mean, she’s always super into working all the time, so like, sitting around alone is just – and like cooking – with her, or whatever. You pulled out grad school papers to grade and everything. Thank you.”

Kevin raises an eyebrow. “She told you how we spent the afternoon?”

“We’re married,” says Jake, leaning in slightly, “so we have a telepathic connection. I _know_ these things.”

Kevin puts the bowl on the counter.

“I got a text from her on my way home,” says Jake.

Kevin’s lips twitch; once, twice, and finally there’s a smile there, small but turned up in the corners in a way that is far more sincere than resigned.

“My pleasure,” he says, lifting the creamy tomato sauce from the stove and starting to pour it carefully into the bowl. “Amy is a wonderful conversationalist, and I found her insight invaluable when going through my students’ work.”

Jake’s eyes flick down of their own accord, and he rolls back a little on the soles of his feet, his mouth pulling into a half-smile. “Yeah – yeah. She’s, she’s just, really smart – like, something else, you know, and I’m – I’m super glad she got to talk about that smart stuff with you, because it’s not really like she – she can do that with me.” Jake exhales, a small puff of air, his mouth still pulling itself into that half-grin that is probably weird and his fingers pressing into the now-warm metal of the silverware in his palms.

(Their kid, he thinks, will probably have so much fun talking to Amy about fancy old timey painters and the word inimitable and how many types of municipal government exist in Ecuador.)

Kevin’s sauce-pouring has paused, it seems, and he tilts the pot back, still careful and measured, the flat chrome surface of the bottom setting gently back down on the burner. He’s focused on the bowl of sauce, carefully wiping the stray drop on the counter with a scrap of paper towel.

“I don’t think Amy feels that lack in her life, to be quite honest. We spoke a little about our personal lives,” he inclines his head, “over the course of the afternoon, and – well, she seems … rather incandescently happy, to be honest.”

Jake looks up from the floor; he can feel the stretch of his lips into a wider smile, can feel the sudden and inexplicable lightness in his chest, contrasting against the heavy warmth of the metal against his fingers.

“... Yeah?”

Kevin pauses, and Jake’s not sure why, but he sees the older man’s eyebrows crease as he turns to finally look straight at Jake, the bowl of pasta sauce forgotten. His eyes flick over Jake as he stands there in the kitchen with an apron over his soft sweater, sleeves pushed back, holding a spatula and a neatly-folded paper towel. Something in his expression shifts.

“Yes, Jake, I do believe I just said that.”

He takes the bowl in his hands, balanced with that perpetual careful motion, so precise and measured in front of him, and he pauses on the way out of the kitchen. His feet still beside Jake’s arm; Jake’s smile has morphed into a sort of awed surprise. He probably looks like an idiot, standing in the kitchen clutching silverware and thinking of the words _incandescently happy_ and the look on his wife’s face as she colour-coordinated mushrooms and broccoli. He probably looks like an idiot, but Kevin pauses, bowl in hand, and says,

“I know my husband will have already told you this, but I wanted to make sure that I mentioned it as well. If you or Amy, or your growing family need anything from either Raymond or I, I hope you feel free to ask.” He takes a breath, nearly inaudible: “We don’t … well, we don’t really have much in the way of family here, in the city, and –”

“Thank you,” says Jake, surprised that anything at all is coming out of his mouth; the tiles of the kitchen floor suddenly feeling inexplicably (and there's that word again) firm and solid under his feet. “Kevin – thank you so much, I –”

“Yes,” says Kevin, “well, I really should – put this tomato alfredo on the table before Raymond makes a joke about the kitchen swallowing me.”

“Hey,” says Jake, before Kevin takes another step. “I just – I know, you guys, you probably don’t – but like, if you ever do need – just, um, samsies. For us.”

Kevin’s smile is soft and small. The basil in the ravioli sauce wafts up and fills Jake’s nose and he’s not sure, but he thinks that maybe Kevin doesn’t think he’s going to be a terrible dad.

(Probably.)

“Thank you, Jake. I’ll keep that in mind.”

He leaves and Jake’s still standing there thirty seconds later, clutching the handful of spoons and forks, when it hits him. The empty kitchen is a wonderful audience.

“Did he just call me _Jake?_ ”

(Amy texts him the next afternoon, with perfect grammar and spelling, and it reads, _Thank God the air conditioning’s not broken anymore_. Jake replies, _pls, u loved it it was like a scnd honymoon_ and tacks on three heart emojis at the end.

She sends him two heart emojis back. He grins at Captain Holt through the glass window of his office, maybe a little hesitant, and he can swear Captain Holt’s lips twitch in reply.)

**

Two weeks later, Holt invites them over for tea, like that’s something they do _on the regular_ , and a small part of Jake is grateful for the provided reason of, “Kevin’s at a conference upstate and I thought we could go over the old robbery case that you found in the records room last week, to see if there’s any hope of bringing it back to life again.”

He watches Amy move comfortably through Holt’s immaculate kitchen after two minutes of entering the house and feels like he can ignore the niggling tightness in his chest.

**

Amy’s almost eight months into the pregnancy: definitely far enough in that they’ve passed the initial scramble and chaos that came right after the realization that they were having a baby.

It’s past the purchasing of thirteen parenting books, the compilation of three binders that Jake’s sure have done more for his biceps than any strength training in the Academy ever did; past the day where they sat on the couch and had a good cry together because neither of them had any idea what they hell they were doing. It’s past Terry giving them a box full of old baby clothes and past Amy making a mind-map of career trajectories on the evidence whiteboard in the briefing room; past his own decision to buckle down and write the sergeant’s exam because even though he’d be happy just solving puzzles and catching bad guys, writing the exam could give him more desk work, less field work, more flexibility in staying home and taking care of an infant.

It’s later at night, well past the threshold of any emotional control, and they’re on the couch, Jake internally debating whether or not it’ll be more sensible to get up and migrate to the bed or just never move again at all, just lay there with his head in Amy’s lap forever.

There’s a list of a million reasons in Jake’s head why Amy is more anxious than usual, the telltale signs of tense shoulders and pinched mouth having constantly been in flux the past few months. She’s always been a worrier; since the very first second of the very first day when the Sarge told him to get up from his desk, make a good impression and for God’s sake, throw out the day-old tzatziki sauce sitting in the drawer because this is your new partner, Detective Santiago. She’d stuck out her hand and the handshake had been absurdly firm and professional and not thirty seconds after she’d sat down, she’d said, _The notation on the date for this report is incorrect,_ and Jake had decided to let the stinky tzatziki sit in the drawer for another hour just because.

He no longer wants to leave tzatziki in desk drawers to annoy her, because by now he knows that her need for order and routine and schedules and lists is so that she can make her way through the day without panicking, or feeling helpless – without second-guessing her own memory of everything she needed to get done. His head is resting against the curve of her tummy and on alternate moments he can feel the movement on the other side of her soft t-shirt. It’s making his chest flutter in a weird way, and she asks him about the exam, something about her voice tight and coiled and weird.

 _I think you’ll make a great captain,_ sudden and abrupt into the silence. Jake scrunches his eyebrows up, frowning.

“What?”

“I mean, for the exam,” she says. He looks up at her, and she’s staring at something across the room. “I, I mean, I think, you’re great and you’ll do great and I’m glad –”

“What?” says Jake.

“Maybe not,” she says, and there’s a funny sort of tired, puffed-out laugh, like she's trying to tease but not quite mustering up the energy. “Not as good as me you know,” and her other hand pokes him lightly in the shoulder. “But really great, Jake. You’ll be really great.”

Jake blinks.

“Ames.”

“Yeah.”

“I – I don’t wanna - I’ve never wanted to be Captain?”

It comes out a question; Jake feels her fingers against his t-shirt where she’d poked him earlier, and her other hand stills, buried against his hairline. She looks down at him, big doe-eyes wide and almost liquid where the light reflects in them from across the room.

“What?”

“What what,” says Jake, still frowning, still looking up at her. She blinks, the soft slit of her lips slightly open.

“But I thought – you said. The exam. I know you’re thinking of writing the sergeant’s exam.”

“Well, yeah,” says Jake. “I told you. Like two weeks ago.”

“I,” says Amy, dark hair framing her face in the soft light of their living room. The air conditioning was fixed last week, but it’s still warm and muggy outside, the heat wave slowly crawling its way through New York. “I, I just. Oh.”

Jake lifts himself upwards into sitting position, taking care not to bump against her belly or squish her thighs with his elbows. “Someone needs to be home with the baby, right?” He swallows, because she’s looking at him in a way that means everything’s not quite okay and Jake hates not knowing what’s wrong; hates not being able to put the pieces of the puzzle together. “And you can go back to work sooner,” he adds, feeling for her fingers on the threadbare upholstery of their old, old couch. “If you want to.”

She blinks at him.

And then punches his arm.

“ _Ow!_ What –”

“Why didn’t you _tell_ me, you butthead!”

“What! I did tell you, two weeks ago –”

“Not about this!”

“ _Trust is a valuable component in any relationship,_ ” he parrots at her, before his brain registers what she’s just said. “What d’you mean, not about this. About the sergeant’s exam? I did, I _swear_ I –”

 _“No_ ,” says Amy. “About the – the – staying home, thing, I thought – I thought you were – I thought I’d have to –”

Jake stares at her. Amy stares back.

“I just,” says Jake, “I just figured you’d want to go back? Sooner? Unless you don’t, that’s okay too, I mean –”

“No!” says Amy, her eyes widening. “I mean _yes_ , or, no, I just –”

Jake squeezes her hand on the couch. “Hey, listen, it’s okay. We can make a, a flowchart, or something, if you want. If it helps. But I talked to Sarge and Holt and, like, Gina, and we can figure out a way to get me flexible hours if I do the exam, right? And it’ll all work out. You can go back as soon as you feel up to it.”

Amy blinks again: once, twice. Jake feels his eyebrows crease, his heart still beating funny because something about the puzzle is still missing, and he feels his other hand lift up of its own accord and press gently against the rounded curve of her cheek.

“Ames? Is everything okay?”

Jake thinks that both of them are exhausted from the underlying stress of the unknown; he’s never planned for anything in most of his life with maybe the exception of getting into the Academy, but he knows that Amy had a Five Year Plan that was kind of totally derailed off track exactly seven months and twenty two days ago. He thinks that he’s looking at her and watching her mouth open soundlessly and a part of him can almost predict the words, “But you love being out in the field,” spilling out of her amazing Santiago Mouth, because she’s one of the most selfless people he’s ever met and some days that knowledge still makes his chest ache.

His hand is still on her cheek.

Amy bursts into tears.

“Amy! _Amy,_ oh my God, I didn’t – is it – are you –”

She shakes her head, and then nods, and Jake is five seconds away from full out panicking (which is bad, because that’s usually her job) before she surges forward and presses her face against his collar bone. It’s awkward maneuvering around the pregnant belly between them, Jake’s knees cramping under him on the couch, but he lets his hands slide over her back and pulls her in and tells himself he’s handling it.

Jake wonders if this is what adulthood really is: panicking, but then handling it.

(Because he _does_ panic, just a little, before hearing the incoherent, _I love yous_ spilling out between her sobs. She stops crying, after a bit; wipes furiously at her face and apologizes – _why is she apologizing?_ – and they both laugh at the fact that there’s a big wet stain on Jake’s t-shirt now – _it’s okay, he doesn’t mind_ – and that for some reason he only has one sock on - _why is he just realizing this now?_ And she kisses his face and eyes and cheek and hair, the same hair that he caught a glimpse of that morning in the bathroom mirror and his eyes widened comically because _holy crap, there’s grey stuff in the corners_.

He doesn’t ask or poke or prod, doesn’t even think to vocalize the, _Amy, you know I’d nevers_ , because he’s known her for twelve years, now, and sometimes he thinks that he knows her better than he knows himself.)

**

(His fingers fumble again when he hands Mrs. Huang her cash later that evening; the bodega is probably five minutes from closing, and Mrs. Huang looks grumpier than usual. Jake’s armed with a bag of baby carrots and mint chocolate chip ice cream, this time, and on impulse, he asks if she’s got any flowers left in the back. She raises an eyebrow, unimpressed.

“Almost ten pm,” says Mrs. Huang.

“I know,” says Jake, twisting his fingers into the plastic of the grocery bag.

“You forgot an anniversary?”

Jake makes a face. “No. Just wondering.”

She sighs and pulls out a slightly wilted bundle of daisies from under the counter.

“I will give you discount anyway.”

Which Jake thinks is probably why he’s unofficially dubbed her some sort of angelic fairy godmother to rival Rosa, because flowers are _expensive_. Almost as expensive as baby clothes, and Jake sometimes finds himself involuntarily thanking God – his lips moving and everything – that people tend to give gifts of baby clothes when you’re expecting. There’s a tiny voice in the back of his head, telling him that a year ago he wouldn’t have been able to afford it at all, but Jake thinks that that’s a supremely unhelpful thing for internal voices to bring up and thanks Mrs. Huang profusely instead.)

**

Jake likes the time they spend at Holt’s house. It’s different from when they go to his Mom’s – softer, more understated, with an odd sort of serenity that Jake’s never really appreciated before. At his Mom’s place, there are picture frames cluttering up the walls and patterned cloth everywhere; something comforting and almost artistic about the chaos as Jake comes back from the kitchen carrying a bowl of pasta to hear the mellow sounds of The Beatles crackle up from his Mom’s old record player.

“I played this song all the time,” his Mom tells Amy, “when I was pregnant. It works great as a lullaby, sweetheart.”

“Mom,” says Jake, as Amy smothers her laughter behind her hand, “I’m not singing my kid a song about LSD.”

“Don’t be silly,” says Karen, waving a hand idly as she steps forward to pluck the glass of water out of Jake’s hand and give it to his still-laughing wife. “It doesn’t leave any lasting effects, unlike the real thing – which, you know, is _not_ as great as everyone says it is –”

“Oh my _God_ , Mom –”

But Karen’s winking at Amy, there in the small living room with the patterned couch throws and the only slightly crooked paintings on the walls, and despite himself Jake feels his lips tug into a grin.

It’s definitely different from the loudness and bustle and happy, bursting energy that is Amy’s parents’ house, always containing at least one other sibling and never without a full plate of food being pushed their way. There, Jake sees bright splashes of colour – yellows and oranges and the ever-present smell of cinnamon and fried onions, and the chili powder that Amy’s father loves so much. There, there’s an old, rickety bookshelf with peeling copies of books, so blatantly unkempt and determinedly perused that even Jake is compelled to look through them sometimes. There, the air is filled with excited shouts of children and the sound of water in the kitchen sink, and the wire frames of Miguel Santiago’s glasses, and Amy’s mother saying, “I’ll tell you, _mijo_ , it’s going to be a boy. These Santiago genes cannot be escaped.”

Amy makes faces from her spot on the floor playing scrabble with Becky, because the next thing Pilar says is, “I’m not surprised it happened so fast, either. The women in this family, ah ah ah. You ask _Abuela_ , they step off their front porch in the morning and _bam_ , pregnant.”

From the other couch, Julian and Carlos start laughing uproariously; Jake chokes on his glass of orange juice and nearly spills it on Isabelle, who is attempting to climb his leg in an effort to convince him to do her nails.

It’s different, too, from the chaos of the precinct – family in another sense of the term, with Rosa smiling at him way more than he ever thought physically possible, Gina deciding to binge-shop for gender-neutral baby clothes on the internet when she should be forwarding Captain Holt his emails, Charles presenting them with a different recipe for gourmet baby food each day, ranging from yams (something Jake’s familiar with) to rutabaga (something Jake couldn’t identify with five pages of internet research, which incidentally, Amy does after Charles’s recipe). Scully gives Jake a stuffed teddy bear holding a smaller bear to its chest, so incredibly soft and fluffy and with a flower-patterned bow tied around its neck to match the couch throw Amy loves so much; Scully smiles and says that he hopes Amy will like it and Jake, in the middle of distracting himself from doing the paperwork for a B and E, has to give a strangled thank you and pretend he's not suddenly and annoyingly about to be emotional in the middle of the bustling police precinct. And Terry writes an immeasurably long list of Hints and Tips on the evidence whiteboard one morning, Jake sat at the table in front of him, listening to the best of his ability. He wonders if he could somehow turn himself into a sponge for the day (or maybe turn himself into Amy for the day, because she can still recite commstat reports from five years ago with only minor screw up), or if Terry could transcribe the List onto a piece of paper or something, because Terry is the best Dad Jake knows, who cares more about his children then probably anything else on earth – who can change a baby in under sixty seconds flat and who’s successfully taught twin girls how to recite the alphabet forwards and backwards, something Jake thinks is pretty nifty.

Also, Terry can’t seem to get through the list without tearing up and saying, “Oh, God, I can’t believe my grown up babies are havin’ babies,” which would be fine if it didn’t mean that Jake’s ribs nearly fold in half when Terry picks him up into a hug halfway through the Tips and Hints whiteboard session, but you know, whatever. Jake doesn’t really mind.

Captain Holt’s house has a sort of quiet order to it that seems to relax and reassure Jake much the same way the man himself does. It’s still one of the nicest houses Jake has ever seen, much less been in, and the polished wood and gleaming tile in the foyer and living room provide elegant backdrop to Captain Holt, standing at the kitchen counter with a cup of tea in his hand and telling Jake and Amy about the time one of his old colleagues accidentally caught an infamous serial killer when he tripped on the sidewalk and spilled his coffee on some poor schmuck who turned out to be the guy whose face they’d been staring at on an evidence whiteboard for the past month.

“Accidental Allen,” Holt says, stirring milk into his earl grey and nodding, the corners of his mouth tight in a way that Jake’s come to identify as Highly Amused. Amy is cradling a cup of chamomile tea in her hands, and Jake is leaning on the island counter on his elbows, perched precariously on the edge of the wooden stools lined up in the middle of the kitchen. His own cup of tea is sitting idly beside his arm, and he knows that Amy’s really into Holt’s story by the fact that she’s stopped shooting his higher-caffeine-content drink wistful looks. “That’s what they started calling him. He hated it, but the name stuck, even after he passed away.”

“How’d he die?” asks Jake immediately, grinning at the infinitesimal sigh Holt gives.

“In his sleep,” says Holt, after a long sip of tea. “After several years of a pleasant and amicable retirement.”

“Aw man,” says Jake, and then pauses. “Um, I mean, that’s great. I’m very happy for him.”

“I can see that,” says Captain Holt; Amy laughs into her tea and Jake grins again.

Holt had invited them over earlier that afternoon, one of many in the unusually hot and sticky Brooklyn summer. He seems to know, as well as Jake does, that Amy needs something to distract herself, to stop her from feeling useless and incapable, now most of the way into her third trimester. Jake’s become accustomed to perching himself on the polished stools at the kitchen island, watching as Captain Holt teaches them how to brew a proper cup of earl grey tea. He’s never been great at tea, even though he can’t even begin to count the number of times he and Amy have shared a cup of tea after some sort of upheaval. He’s never been great at tea, because whenever he tries to make a cup it ends up tasting like dishwater and one time the microwave almost exploded, and is that a quality he should know as a dad? Good tea-making? His mom is a tea person, he knows, she always makes great tea, but somehow that skill wasn’t passed on to him and is tea-making something you learn from a dad, Jake doesn’t know, he _doesn’t know_ and what if one day his kid asks him how to make tea and all he can do is offer cups of almost-exploded dishwater and –

No, Jake tells himself. It’s okay. Amy knows how to make very good tea, and he’s here now, listening to Captain Holt, so it should be okay.

Amy sits in one of the dining room chairs, moved into the kitchen on the other side of the island, a couch cushion fitted carefully behind her back and long hair pulled out of her face. Jake spends his time alternating between listening to Holt tell them stories about his time as a rookie detective and watching the way his wife’s eyes scrunch up when she smiles.

He takes a sip of his tea and sucks at his bottom lip, successfully inhibiting an involuntary grimace.

“Could I –”

“Yes, Peralta, I do have sugar for your tea.”

Jake feels his smile grow wider. (And, anyway, Amy got honey in _her_ tea.)

“Great,” says Jake. “Five please.”

Captain Holt takes the cup from him and for the first time, Jake swears there isn’t a resigned sigh accompanying it.

**

(“You have kids, right?”

Mrs. Huang drops three quarters into Jake’s outstretched hand and shrugs.

“Maybe.”

“Um,” says Jake, hefting his bag of spaghetti. “Were you – I mean, were you really scared, a little? At first?”

Mrs. Huang pauses in the act of closing the cash register and narrows her eyes at him. She’s very good at narrowing eyes, Jake has noticed.

“You are having a baby?”

“Sort of,” says Jake. “I mean, yes. Yes, we’re definitely having a baby. Babies are happening.”

She nods and taps at a few things on the register.

“I will give you tea for your wife.”

“No, that’s not –” Jake starts, but she’s already turned and is rummaging in the back of the counter, and Jake thinks that it might be terribly rude to just turn and leave.

“Good tea,” says Mrs. Huang, taking the grocery bag back from Jake’s hands and waving a green box of tea with no labels in his face. “Helps with back pain.”

“Oh,” says Jake. “That’s – wow, thank you, actually, I’m –”

She hands the bag back to him and pats his arm three times. “Don’t be scared. Come back and buy flowers soon, yes?”

Jake sighs and nods, and Mrs. Huang goes back to her cash register, unruffled.)

**

Jake wonders if the impulse to pull out his phone and send his dad a text is normal.

It’s not always there – barely there, actually – but there’ll be moments, blips in the road, when nothing big and attention-grabbing is happening. Amy is singing to the Hamilton soundtrack in the next room and Jake’s scrambling eggs and suddenly he’ll think, _what if I texted my dad_. There’s a lull at the precinct, or he’s working from his desk or studying for the sergeant’s exam and the pen will be heavy in his fingers and he’ll think, _what if I texted my dad._

Jake’s pretty sure his dad doesn’t even know he’s _married_ , let alone that he’s having a kid. Unless his mom’s said something – but he doesn’t think she has, not after he left the last time, and Jake’s mom is the most amazing person on earth, Jake knows, but there’s only so much you can do when you have to work long hours to keep yourself standing and Jake spent most of his time as a kid at his Nana’s place anyway –

It’s weird, and he’s weird, and also dumb because who cares, Jake thinks, sitting squashed between Manny and Alexa on Amy’s parents’ couch and barely breathing because he’s laughing so hard, Amy’s mom gesticulating wildly with her hands about some terrible habit or other of one of her many sons. _Who cares_ , Jake thinks, as his own mother drops by the precinct one day with a thermos full of soup and gives Rosa and Gina and Charles big hugs, patting them on the tops of their hair and humming what sounds suspiciously like Abba under her breath. _Who cares_ , as Sharon offers for Amy to spend the day with her and the kids, and Amy tries to teach Cagney and Lacey how to crochet little flowers and maybe she’s only one-third successful but when Jake comes to pick her up, the house is filled with laughter and the delighted sounds of children and Sharon tells him to stay for another couple hours and have some lemonade.

It’s dumb – _really_ dumb.

Jake takes to tossing his phone out of reach whenever the thought pops up in his head.

They’re working a case, following the trail of a couple electronics store robbers who left behind a cartoon drawing of a purple and orange polka-dotted cat taped to the store window and nothing else. Jake wants to call them The Cat Burglars, but Rosa’s being a terrible tang in the mud and raining on his parade.

“They didn’t steal any cats,” she says for the umpteenth time that afternoon, rolling her eyes. “Call them – I dunno – polka thieves or something.”

“God, Diaz, who _raised_ you?”

“ _They didn’t steal any cats._ ”

“Ugh,” says Jake, making an exaggerated huffing sound. “Ugh, _fine_. But no polka thieves.”

Jake’s got his hands stuffed in his pockets as they walk down the sidewalk, and there’s a rock in front of him that he keeps kicking his shoe against. It skitters on the concrete in front of him every other step – a habit, more than anything, something to keep him occupied. He can see Rosa’s curls bouncing in his periphery as she walks beside him. 

And then, out of the blue:

“Ava loves you.”

Jake falters. The rock skates awkwardly over the pavement and into the gutter.

“What?”

“Just –” Rosa shrugs, casual, as though she’s commenting on the weather, but her hands are stuffed in her pockets, too, and her shoulders look a little tenser than they were a moment before. “You seem all stressed and stuff. So, I dunno. Don’t be.”

Jake feels his hand come up reflexively to – to run through his hair, or fiddle with his shirtsleeve, or grab his badge or _something_ , some embarrassing and childish nervous habit that he really needs to kick. He stops himself, instead stuffing the errant hand deeper into his own pocket. The laugh that comes out is only breathless because he’s surprised that Rosa said anything in the first place.

“Thanks, Rosa, but –”

“Nope,” says Rosa, harsh voice cutting smoothly over his own. “You’re great with kids. Isn’t that how this works?”

“Um,” says Jake, fingers curling against the inner fabric of his hoodie.

“Anyway,” says Rosa, clearing her throat slightly and tilting her chin inwards in the way she does when she’s about to say something uncharacteristically sentimental. “When we were at Terry’s last month, you know, for the dinner thing.” Jake looks at her to see the corners of her lips twitching despite the forced disinterest of her tone. “She went, ‘I love Uncle Jake’ in her weird baby voice and it was kinda cute, I guess. Or whatever.”

Jake exhales, his steps slowing, and he sees Rosa slow down too until they’re standing on the sidewalk.

“It’s normal to be stressed.”

Rosa’s thick brows lower on her forehead. She crosses her arms. “Jake.”

“It’s normal to be stressed when you’re having your first kid,” Jake says again, another breathy laugh chasing after the end of his sentence. “That’s what everyone says, Rosa.”

She inhales, sucking in a big whoosh of air, and turns her head to look up at the sky. When she looks back down, something about the hard lines of her face has softened. Jake looks at the pavement, deliberate.

“Jake, listen to me. I know you’re freaked out about this."

"I'm not -"

"Peralta, I've known you for twenty _goddamn_ years." She's frowning, now, arms uncrossed. "And don’t tell me you’ve talked to Amy and it’s fine, because I know you _have_ done that - you guys are so into being close and emotional or whatever and that's great, but that is also exactly why you’ve gotta _figure this out_.” She takes another deep breath, and looks away, once, before looking him in the eye. “You guys are happy. You’re gonna be _good_ parents. Stop freaking out.”

“I’m _fine_ ,” he tries again, swallowing. He _is_ fine. There are loads of things that they’re still a little unsure of, maybe, yeah. But he’s _fine_ , he’s dealing with it, and even Mrs. Huang has stopped asking him if he’s alright when he goes down to the bodega to pick up toothpaste and macaroni, and he _really_ wishes Rosa would let him names these perps The Cat Burglars.

Rosa seems to hesitate for a second, lips pursing very slightly, before her hand jerks forwards and punches him lightly in the shoulder. Her eyes are dark and soft, and the corner of her lips quirks upwards just a little. Jake rubs at his shoulder reflexively and quirks his lips back into some sort of half-smile.

“C’mon,” she says, finally. Jake stuffs his hands back into his pockets. “Let’s go get these dumb dumbs.”

**

Sometimes, Amy falls asleep on the couch, the pillows piled behind her, and Jake introduces Captain Holt to _X-men_.

“I used to love these when I was a kid,” he says, grinning and taking the most battered copy out of his old box of comic books, retrieved a few years previous from his Mom’s storage room. The _Captain America_ issues have been tossed haphazardly over the coffee table, over to the side, and Jake flips through the comic in his hand. His chest is full in a way that he can’t explain, bolstered by the fact that Holt’s first comment when they walked through the door that evening was, “I greatly appreciated the work of superhero fiction you lent me, Jake.”

Now, Holt takes his glasses out of their case and puts them on, perched steadily on the bridge of his nose.

“Yes,” he agrees, leaning in very slightly to look down at the comic in Jake’s hand. “Their commentary is particularly insightful.”

Jake swallows, trying to stop the smile from tugging at the corner of his lips. He lets his elbows rest on the knees of his jeans and runs his thumb over the worn corner of the book, teeth biting down gently on his lip. He can remember the way Nana would open the door with the plate of sandwiches already on the table each second day after school, how he’d lay on his stomach on the living room couch and make his way through every single issue he owned with determination and concentration. Nana had bought him a box of them for his birthday, he remembers, and kept it stored in the pantry of her apartment. _If only you read your homework the way you read these stories,_ his fourth grade teacher had said once, with the tired resignation of a public school employee who didn’t have the time or energy to spend understanding why a nine-year-old couldn’t get higher than a D+ on a spelling test.

“My Nana’d buy them for me and I’d read them after school.” He flicks to another page. “They were my favorites. ‘Sides from Captain America, of course.”

“Yes, Kevin has mentioned him before,” says Holt, his voice not quite amused but light and gentle. Jake grins; never-ending amusement at the fact that Dr. Kevin Cozner, PhD, is not too sophisticated to be above discussing the philosophical story structure of Superman’s origins.

(“As it relates back to the Biblical themes,” he’d said once, that first time they’d been invited to dinner, while Amy crushed Jake’s fingers under the table. “From a literary perspective,” Kevin had said, nodding and fingering his glass of wine, a hint of a smile playing at the corners of his lips. “It’s quite fascinating.”

Jake thought that he was lucky Amy’s dad was so into superhero theology, too, so that he didn’t have to fumble through another case of accidental-pro-slavery-endorsement and could actually contribute to the conversation.)

“Yeah, anyway,” says Jake, shrugging and pausing to remind himself not to tuck his feet up under him on the couch, because that’s childish and unprofessional and even though Captain Holt is in a soft yellow cardigan and a very pregnant Amy is asleep under Kevin’s second-favorite afghan in the other room, he still feels just a little bit weird, tucking his legs under him on the couch in Captain Holt’s house. Jake flicks a page and tries not to grin at the splash illustration, taking up the full width of the book. If his mom were here, she’d gasp in delight over the watercolour artwork. “I can’t believe you totally loved the one I gave you,” he says, instead of whatever else he wants to say, which he himself isn’t quite sure of yet but thinks might be a little too much Feelings in one go. “I mean, I, like, thought you would. But.”

Jake shrugs a second time, focusing on the comic illustrations.

But Holt only nods again, looking serious. “The metaphor is blunt,” he takes a different issue from the pile, “but handled with … finesse. I thought the issue you gave me was especially poignant. I –” Holt hesitates, and then reaches to the ground and picks something up. “I took notes. If that’s acceptable.”

It’s a notepad, and it’s yellow and lined and Jake stares at the page full of Holt’s neat, cursive writing.

Even the margins are full.

“Wow,” says Jake.

Captain Holt clears his throat. “As I said, I enjoyed the social commentary immensely.”

Jake’s still looking at the neat loops and curls on the page, progressively getting more scribbled as his eyes reach the bottom. He reaches out involuntarily, but catches himself just in time.

“Um – can I –?”

“Oh,” says Captain Holt, clearing his throat once more. “Yes, of course.”

Jake takes the notepad; there’s a voice at the back of his mind wondering aloud why he’s so awed by this, the clear evidence (and he’s a detective, isn’t he, a _super awesome genius detective_ , so he’s always looking for the evidence) of the time and care and thought that Holt put into reading what Jake gave him. He shouldn’t be surprised, Jake thinks, and yet he is, and maybe that’s what’s more contributing to the fullness in his chest.

Jake’s still looking at the notepad, his eyes tracing the loopy script that is so much neater and more legible than his own, when he hears Holt’s voice again.

“So these are what you spent your childhood reading,” he says, and Jake glances up to find him flipping through one of the newer X-men issues. He’s sitting there in his yellow sweater with his glasses on and house slippers on his feet, and maybe it’s the odd sort of quietude that’s settled over the house, or the fact that Holt’s wearing slippers, but Jake finds himself talking before he can process what he’s about to say – something that he does, admittedly, do all the time, his head-to-mouth filter consistently on holiday in Barbados, probably.

But.

“The words were easier to focus on with the pictures there to help.”

(Well.)

Jake swallows the moment the sentence has spilled out of his mouth and his face twitches, like it’s not quite sure if it wants to grimace or not. Quickly, he grins instead, biting his bottom lip between his teeth, and looks back down at the splash page in his hand.

It’s not really a big deal, he knows; that maybe he’s only read twenty and a half books in total (of the thirteen baby books Amy bought, Jake can proudly say that he’s made his way through five so far – twice for one of them, thanks – and even though Amy has twelve and a half of them practically memorized, Jake considers the five books thing an accomplishment, and maybe brings it up on days where the only thing screaming through his head is _oh God oh my God, I can’t even vacuum the living room without knocking down two lamps and nearly destroying the carpet, I’m gonna be a terrible Dad._ ) But this is Holt, and maybe sort of everything that Holt does makes Jake want to be better and do better, and sometimes it’s hard to pretend that it doesn’t bother him just a tiny little bit that his handwriting is still so atrocious that the only two people he knows who can decipher it are Gina (mostly from time and experience and the fact that she used to help him with his math homework in elementary school, but also due to some kind of inherent Gina-ness that Jake is as of yet unable to explain) and Amy (from the fact that she has an ingrained need for perfectionism and somewhere along the way that meant proofreading all of his paperwork on the cases that they closed together, and they have known each other for almost twelve years, after all).

But when he looks up again, Captain Holt has only tilted his head to the side, still intent on the comic in his hand.

“Perhaps,” he says, familiar baritone suddenly and absurdly reassuring, “you could introduce me to the Captain America story as well? Kevin tells me that he originates in Brooklyn, and I am admittedly very intrigued.”

(Jake wonders if his kid will like comics – if that’s a thing he can do with them, make peanut butter sandwiches and flip through Steve Rogers’ adventures under a blanket fort in the living room, the comics stacked up in a corner with Amy’s old Nancy Drew novels, and Jake thinks that he’ll try his hardest to help them out if they don’t get all the words right, because sometimes when he was a kid he wished that _his_ dad could’ve been there to do that with him.)

Jake feels himself exhale, feels himself gasp out, “Ohmigosh, okay, Cap was like my _hero_ as a ten-year-old. After John McClane, of course,” he adds, fingers catching on the edge of the comic, and tries not to let his lips twitch, ignoring the little thrum in his chest.

“Of course,” says Captain Holt seriously, adjusting his glasses, and Jake can’t help but grin.

**

(“Amy likes your tea,” Jake tells Mrs. Huang on Tuesday, putting a can of peaches onto the counter. Amy also likes canned peaches, something that in all the twelve years Jake has known her has never been a thing before, but he guesses it’s a thing now. “Also, how are you today, Mrs. Huang.”

“Good,” says Mrs. Huang, ringing up the peaches. And again, “good. Two fifty-four.”

“Right,” says Jake, and digs through his wallet.

“You are not scared anymore?” she asks, pressing the bag against his chest. Jake blinks.

“Um,” he says.

Mrs. Huang nods like she understands.

“Try the tea,” she says. “Also helps with things that are not back pain.”

Jake laughs, and maybe his voice cracks a little, but Mrs. Huang pats him on the arm again and it’s not all bad.)

**

At some point along the way, between that afternoon when they cried on the couch and the day they officially named Rosa godmother (she thrust a package full of baby clothes with giraffes and turtles on them into Jake’s arms two weeks later before awkwardly crushing him into a hug that he thinks might have bruised his sternum), Jake and Amy make a list. Specifically, of names.

Even more specifically, of baby names. It’s not colour-coded, because Jake claims that gendered colours are dumb and obsolete (Amy’s word), and even though Amy tells Gina later that they could have still colour coded it without using socially acceptable gendered colours, she doesn’t argue.

“Eugene,” says Charles, levelling his fork into the air and looking pensive over his plastic Tupperware of curried cow hoof. “I really like the name Eugene.”

“Anything that isn’t Eugene,” says Rosa.

“Mmmmm, how ‘bout Vanessa,” says Gina. She’s bending paperclips into different shapes, some of which Jake swears could be genitals. “It’s a classic. Regina is good too.”

“Choose names that mean something special to you,” says Terry, wiping mustard off the corner of his mouth. “Terry believes in semantically strong baby names.”

Jake asks Captain Holt, one evening when Holt gets up to retrieve a book from the bookshelf. Amy and Kevin are discussing something involving ancient Greek architecture animatedly on the couch, and Jake trails after Holt, hands fiddling with the hem of his shirt.

“A name,” says Captain Holt slowly. “Well, it would have to be whatever you and Amy deem fit. I don’t see how I’m qualified to suggest names for your child, Jake.”

Which is maybe what Jake should have expected, but it’s still disheartening. Their list is a whole page long now, and they’ve gone through everything from Adelaide to Xavi.

(Jake even suggested Hurricane, once. It _does_ work for both a boy and a girl, no matter what Terry says.)

It really shouldn’t be a big stressor, picking out a name. Maybe it’s because somewhere in the bad of his head, a tiny, niggling voice keeps suggesting that it feels like the one thing they can actually control, but despite the continually growing list, pinned to the front of their fridge with a magnet in the shape of Nakatomi Tower, choosing a name for the baby is giving Jake more of a hard time than assembling their Ikea crib did. It’s a little frustrating – going through name after name and not finding anything that feels right in his mouth, that rolls out smoothly and with meaning. There’s something missing, and Amy knows it too, because every time they look at each other and say, “hmmm, no,” the bridge of her nose crinkles ever so slightly.

Captain Holt has been inviting them over more often now. Maybe it’s by design, but sitting at the kitchen island drinking earl grey and chamomile seems to be foolproof in distracting Jake from everything that he’s worried he’s going to screw up. On alternate afternoons, Kevin is there too, adding his own comments to the mix; gentler and warmer toward them than ever before, but still carrying a slight lick of his dry wit under his words as he bounces the conversation off of his husband. He offers to send Amy papers to read on child psychology, written by one of his colleagues, and argues, laughter in his voice with Captain Holt on the correct way to prepare an egg. Jake spends a whole day revelling over the fact that there’s a box of Frosted Flakes under the kitchen counter, inside the cupboard, because Kevin has a weakness for it.

“No way,” says Jake, holding up the box and beaming. “I grew _up_ on frosted flakes! They were the only thing I’d eat!”

“Yes, my mother also always bought them for my sister and I when we were young,” says Kevin, clearing his throat and shifting slightly in his seat. “They’re terribly bad for your health, as Raymond always reminds me, but there is – a, ah, sentimental value to them, I suppose.”

“Ppfft,” says Jake, “They’re not _that_ bad for you. One time I had almost ten bowls in one day, and look at me, I turned out fine.”

“You had a major sugar crash at around six pm and spent the rest of the night feeling nauseas and I had to do your paperwork,” says Amy, from her spot at the kitchen table, raising an eyebrow.

“It was _fine_ ,” says Jake, wondering if he’ll be a bad parent if he feeds his kid Frosted Flakes and leaning in conspiratorially; Kevin gives a wry smile and takes another sip of tea, and Jake counts it as a win.

Sometimes, though, it’s just the three of them – Jake and Amy and Captain Holt, companionable in the evening twilight. Jake’s more familiar with the library now, much to Amy’s delight; it’s heavy and very organized, full of books with thick textured hard covers and very different from their little bookshelf at home in the room they’ve set up as the baby’s room, with the slightly lopsided shelf and the six colourful baby books lined up against the wallpaper, three of them in Spanish because even though he can’t read more than one or two words between the lot of them Amy’s eyes lit up bright and chocolate and beautiful when she saw him pick one up at the bookstore. There’s a permanent supply of chamomile tea in the kitchen cupboard, beside the earl grey, and a little pot of honey tucked behind the sugar bowl; and Jake’s pretty sure he’s lost at least two of his study sheets to Cheddar’s teeth in the past week and a half, which he hasn’t told Amy about because she’d probably take it upon herself to personally rewrite the sheets for him and she’s already busy with her Birth Plan Binder, something that Sharon told her to make three months in and that she’s been fine-tuning ever since.

Captain Holt tells him about some of his earliest cases – the good ones, the stories that aren’t so much soured by the prejudice and bigotry, but brightened by triumph and the thrill of solving the puzzle.

(Amy tells him later in a soft, half-asleep voice that she’s never seen Jake listen so attentively, never seen him stay so quiet for such extended periods of time. They’re laying sprawled in the bed as Jake drives the old toy police car that used to sit on his desk over the swell of her belly, making soft _nyoom_ noises under his breath, and he’s too tired to poke at her over the unintended tease. He thinks that maybe her voice sounds like what a melting vanilla bean Frappuccino tastes, sweet and gentle and dissolving at the ends, and Jake wants to say that he’s never heard the Captain laugh so freely and comfortably, either.)

Jake tries to smuggle as many cases out of the precinct as he can, spreading his stuff out on Holt’s kitchen island and watching as Amy’s eyes light up scanning over the collected evidence. She’s officially been on leave for almost a month, now, not even allowed desk work anymore, and Jake knows that solving the cases is as much of a thrill to her as it is him. He also thinks that Holt enjoys it as much as Amy does, drawing patterns over the marble counter using sticky notes and the white board they’ve dragged in from the den, because he hasn’t yet reminded Jake of the rules and regulations surrounding the transport of case files and Jake does the paperwork for three solved robberies and one case of arson in the span of two weeks.

“Ooh, this one could work. Elena.”

“Isn’t that the murder victim’s ex-girlfriend?”

“The _mother_ of the murder victim’s ex-girlfriend. One of the witnesses,” Amy says, tapping the counter with the edge of her pen and putting a green sticky note on the edge of the file. “And I still think it’s a nice name.”

“Elena,” says Jake slowly, rolling the word off of his tongue. It is nice, melodic and pretty, but something feels off.

“Other than the ex-girlfriend’s mother thing,” prompts Amy.

“Other than the ex-girlfriend’s mother thing,” agrees Jake. He sucks at his lower lip and taps his fingers against his hips. “But we can still put it on the list?”

(The list is on his phone, and his phone is sitting at the bottom of his bag right now in the foyer because the Dad Texting Impulse had returned that morning. Jake wishes it would go away.)

“Hang on,” says Amy, frowning at the paper in front of her. “She was seen at all three of the places the suspect was seen last.”

Holt adds a note to the evidence whiteboard and adjusts his glasses. “I presume that you will not be putting her name on the list, then.”

It’s not exactly that Jake is worried about the name, he thinks. It’s probably the thing on the bottom of his Worry List, something that isn’t _truly_ a big deal and is only weighing on his mind because he doesn’t want to think about all the other worries. He doesn’t tell Charles this, late at night at the precinct wrapping up paperwork and pretending that he isn’t delaying said paperwork being done by covertly browsing baby name websites online. (Captain Holt is gone for the evening, anyway.) Instead, he says that it’s more frustrating than anything, not being able to come up with something as simple as this. There are millions of names out there. Millions of beautiful, wonderful names, and _one_ of those names has got to work.

“Try Daphne,” says the prostitute in holding, leaning up against the glass. Her dark hair is piled in curls on top of her head and Jake has to appreciate the contour technique that she used on her cheeks. “It’s a classic.”

“Daphne is a wonderful name,” says Charles, nodding encouragingly.

“Is that your name?” asks Jake, rubbing a heavy hand against his eyelids.

“You kiddin’?” says Not-Daphne. “It was my grandmother’s, hon. Wonderful woman, practically raised me. I’ll be very offended if you don’t use it.”

“Um,” says Jake. “I’ll have to ask my wife.”

“That means he’s considering it!” says Charles, smiling at both of them and nodding again. “See, we’ve made progress!”

Jake lets his head drop onto the desk.

Maybe it’s just a mental block, he suggests to Gina on a Friday, as she helps him carry groceries upstairs to the apartment. Amy is at her parents’ house for the weekend and Jake is equal parts bored out of his mind and oddly lonely, and stressing about baby names.

Ugh, _no_. He’s not _supposed_ to be stressing. This is the one thing he said he _wouldn’t_ stress about.

“You sound stressed,” says Gina, letting the lightest grocery bag hang off the two fingers of her right hand as she leans against the elevator door. She lifts her phone and very obviously snaps a picture. “Lighten up, boo. Remember my mom’s daycare? Those devil munchkins all loved you.”

“I’m not stressed,” says Jake, sounding stressed. “And, also, not the point here, Goose.”

“Mmm, I’m telling you, Regina is an excellent name.”

(Jake wonders at the dissonance in the conviction that it’s going to be a boy and the overabundance of female baby names that everyone keeps suggesting.)

“What if it’s a boy?”

“Eh, he’ll appreciate it if he’s raised well.”

Jake hefts the bag with the oranges and milk in it and purses his lips.

Amy says that maybe they should just name the baby after someone they know. That would be the easiest route, she says, and would also be meaningful, because they know the person, and how many of the people they know have lovely names? Most of them, says Amy. Most of them have lovely names.

“What about Daphne?” says Jake, and Amy’s eyebrows scrunch up in confusion.

“We know a Daphne?”

“Ah,” says Jake. “Well. Um. Not exactly.”

(And maybe it’s whatever Rosa was talking about, this sudden building anxiety in his chest. He swears he was fine a week ago – two weeks ago, really. Excited, maybe, and just a tiny bit overwhelmed, but not _anxious_ – not the kind that crawls up your throat and tugs at your belly and makes you question every decision you’ve ever made in your life. He wonders if this is what Amy felt like, that night on the couch, but he also thinks that maybe it’s the culmination of so many little things that he’s slowly been realizing he has no idea how to do – so many small moments where Amy knows from experiencing it with her own parents, where Jake falters where it should come naturally to him. Maybe it’s always been there a little bit but not mattered, and it still _shouldn’t matter_ , says a small voice in his head – only it’s really very difficult telling his brain to stop doing what it’s been doing for the past thirty-odd years of his life and cease in its insistence that he's somehow _not enough_.)

He thinks that maybe he’s not doing the best job hiding his frustration, or maybe he’s just not drinking enough of Mrs. Huang’s miracle tea, because Amy is eight months and three days pregnant when Captain Holt calls Jake into his office and Jake starts rambling.

Or breaking down.

Or something.

“– should be able to figure out a simple _name_ ,” he’s saying, dropping his badge to run a hand through his shorn curls (Amy had made him go to the barber’s last week because he’d somehow forgotten to get a haircut in over two months and it was turning into what Gina had once fondly dubbed “teenage Bar Mitzvah DJ mode”). He stumbles slightly as he turns to continue pacing in front of the desk. “I mean it’s gotta be the easiest thing you’re supposed to do, here, and what, what do they say about –”

“Jake.”

“– About the name defining the kid, or, or I mean how can you _raise_ the baby if you can’t _name_ the baby –”

“Jake.”

“– And like maybe I read that in one of Darlene’s magazines last month but I mean those things still hold, hold water right, and what if I’m really not –”

“ _Jacob_.”

Jake trips against the chair in front of Captain Holt’s desk and almost knocks over the little rainbow flag at the edge trying to steady himself.

“Yes, sir.”

Captain Holt is looking at him with his hands clasped over the clean surface of the table, and this his eyebrows raise slightly when Jake looks at him. “Please sit down before you injure yourself.”

Jake lowers himself into the seat in front of the desk and lets his feet press against each other, tucked awkwardly behind the legs of the chair. His hands grab at his badge again.

“I’m sorry,” Jake mutters into the table. “I – you called me here for the Werthman case and I lost it, that was dumb of me, Captain, I –”

“You know,” says Captain Holt, his voice cutting smoothly through Jake’s stumbling words. “When I was eleven, my mother told me that the only thing that defined my name was I myself.”

Jake looks up from his hands.

“… Sir?”

Captain Holt sighs, and reaches over to adjust the lopsided flag on the edge of the desk.

“All I’m saying, Jake, is that it’s not always so much the name itself as who carries it. Or carried it, or is going to carry it. I believe Sergeant Jeffords suggested you choose something meaningful.”

Jake exhales. “I – yeah. It’s just, I –” His breath hitches, and he can’t stop himself from saying what comes out next, but he also thinks that maybe it's the one thing that just really, really, _needs_ to be said: “It’s not really the name, you know?”

There’s a pause, and Jake’s looking at his fingers again, but when Captain Holt speaks again, his voice is gentle.

“I know.”

“I mean,” Jake hears himself say, “I mean it’s not that – that I didn’t have _anyone?_ Or – you know, I just feel like I should know more than I do and –”

“I have it on good authority,” says Captain Holt, “that only the best people feel that way when they are about to have their first child. Or, even, their third child.”

Jake looks up, eyebrows creasing in question. (Something in his heart trips at the compliment.)

“Terry shares quite a lot after one drink,” says Holt. The corners of his lips twitch. Jake feels some of the tension in his shoulders dissipate involuntarily.

“At any rate,” Holt continues, unclasping his hands and gesturing widely – something that seems to sweep over the desk and Jake and the precinct and everything that’s been constant in Jake’s life for so long, now. “I’m not sure, as I told you a few weeks ago, that my input on this is of any consequence at all, but –” He hesitates, and clears his throat softly. “A name is something one carries wherever they go, whoever they turn out to be. It is theirs, and theirs alone.”

Jake’s lips pull into a lopsided grin, and he exhales: not quite a laugh, but mirth carrying over the top of the words that come next.

“That’s what my Nana used to say.”

Holt smiles – the real thing, this time, his lips curling upwards and his dark eyes twinkling. “Smart woman,” he says, and Jake’s grin stretches into something more solid.

And –

Jake frowns.

“Wait.”

Captain Holt’s eyebrows have raised again, quizzical.

“Jake?”

“I – can I just – can I make a phonecall?”

It’s like something concrete and unbreakable has slotted into his chest, slowly solidifying against his diaphragm; Nana’s voice is clearbright technicolour in his mind, the scratched maple of her kitchen table in front of him and a smear of peanut butter on his cheek from the sandwich clutched in his ten-year-old hands and she’s pouring the apple juice, smelling of banana pudding and lemon dish detergent.

 _You have to give meaning to the name you’ve got, as she’d reached over and wiped at his cheek with a napkin. I tell myself every day, I say Ruth, what kind of person are you going to be? What is your name going to represent today? You remember that,_ bubbula. _Every day, you’ve got to make the decision._

“I want the developments for the Werthman case on my desk by five o’clock,” says Holt, but his eyes are still smiling, and Jake can’t stop the smile from growing on his own face, either, it seems, as he stumbles out of the chair and blurts out his thanks over his shoulder, pushing past the door and Gina’s desk and fumbling with his phone on the way to Babylon.

“ _Jake? Oh, oh my gosh I was_ just _going to call you! Listen, remember how I was watching over Julian’s kids today? I think – I think I have a name_.”

Jake’s grinning, his cheek pressed against the cool glass of the mirror and the scent of lavender clinging to his clothes, his fingers curled tightly around the phone pressed to his ear.

“Me too,” he says, his breath escaping him all in one whoosh and his eyes fluttering closed. “Me too, Ames.”

**

He comes back from the kitchen armed with a glass of water when he realizes that Amy’s fallen asleep on Captain Holt’s shoulder.

It’s not particularly late at night – just enough for the sky outside to be dark, for the low indoor lights to magnify the brightness of the television screen. They’re watching _Star Wars_ , because Amy had insisted a week previous that though the squad forced Captain Holt to watch all seven films the year before (something that had involved lots of tears and the memorable moment where Jake rugby-tackled an appalled Amy off the couch to stop her from spoiling anything for Captain Holt, who had commented on how he didn’t see the flaw in the Jedi’s non-attachment rules), it was the sort of classic that only improved with each reviewing.

They’ve been sitting comfortably on the couch for the past few hours, finally nearing the end of _Return of the Jedi_ , and Jake knows that Amy’s going to pretend that she’s not crying when Anakin Skywalker finally dies. So he slips off the couch and into the kitchen, pours himself a glass of water and sets the water to boil for tea, his movements careful and slow because his limbs are still not one hundred percent accustomed to Holt’s larger kitchen and he thinks that accidentally breaking something is somewhere up there on that list with bee-related skinny dipping and paperwork. He’s clutching the glass of water in his hand, ready to lean against the doorframe and watch from there until he hears the click of the kettle; his arms and legs are leaded with sleepiness, the business of the week slowly catching up to him. He hasn’t had coffee since that morning with lunch, which is probably why there’s a muddled quality to his thoughts, and he’s about to take a gulp of cold water to clear his head when he pauses – not surprised, exactly, but –

Amy’s head has lolled down, her cheek squishing against Captain Holt’s shoulder, and Jake can see the stillness in Holt’s posture, as though he’s being very careful not to move and disturb her even as he watches the events on the television screen enfold with an intensely thoughtful look. A piece of Amy’s hair slips out of its ponytail and flutters down to tickle her cheek.

It’s a strange feeling: the kind that isn’t really something registered right away, filling up his heart and lungs and entire chest with a sort of full, warm thrill. It’s big and warm enough to push everything else out of his chest to make room for itself, expanding and taking up space, and Jake feels his free hand involuntarily come up and rest against his ribs through the worn material of his t-shirt. The lamps in the living room are dimmed, the flickering blue light of the television (moved downstairs after much deliberation and a near-fatal accident on the staircase) illuminating the couch’s occupants. Jake can feel the sleep-heavy, comfortable atmosphere of the area, and he thinks that maybe it’s the realization that this is _normal_ and _familiar_ that is making his throat betray him and suddenly close up.

Jake slips back into the kitchen and clears his throat, pressing the palm of his hand against his eyes and barely even noticing the click of the fancy kettle in the corner as the water comes to boil. He places his own glass of water on the kitchen table, hardly even noticing his own movements, and walks back out to the couch.

When he eases himself gently onto the couch, Captain Holt turns to glance at the Amy on his shoulder and then back up at Jake.

“I did not want to disturb her,” he whispers, the sounds of Ewok celebration playing in the background, and Jake smiles, softly.

“Ames,” he whispers, brushing the hair out of her face. It’s barely nine o’clock, he thinks, but everything feels so dreamlike.

“Mmm,” mumbles Amy, her eyes fluttering open. “Jake?”

Jake grins at her. There’s a dot of drool at the corner of her mouth, and he’s mostly sure that tomorrow morning she’s going to get the teasing of her life.

“We’ve gotta head home, babe.”

Amy nods, still half-asleep, and lets her eyelids slide shut again. “Love you,” she mutters, the words blending together, and Jake tucks her hair behind her ear and feels the tightness in his throat again. “Love you too,” he whispers, as Captain Holt picks up the remote and turns off the television.

At the door, Holt clasps Jake’s shoulder, the one that doesn’t have the backpack strap covering it.

“Call if you need anything,” he says, in that same measured, steady baritone that Jake knows so well.

Jake nods – and then, on impulse, steps forward and hugs him. He can sense Holt’s surprise in the feel of his shoulders under Jake’s fingers, but a moment later he’s exhaling and patting his hand against Jake’s back.

(A week later, Jake will hold his daughter in his arms, her soft brown skin and wispy dark curls nestled against the crook of his arm. Maya Ruth Santiago-Peralta is named first for herself and second for a woman smelling of banana pudding and probably Love itself, and Jake can’t stop crying, it feels like, tears spilling down his cheeks and blurring his vision and his breath shaking in his chest, because she’s the most beautiful thing he’s ever seen.

He’ll hold her and lift her tiny perfect ear to his mouth and whisper, _I love you_ , and it’s a promise.)

(Jake can keep a promise, he thinks. And anyway – it’s up to him to wake up every morning and make a decision, isn’t it?)

**Author's Note:**

> AND NOW, FOR THE NOTES:
> 
> \- I really hope that the story arc makes sense/is coherent. I did tweak a few things in the move from tumblr, but even so I'm not 100% on the smoothness and fluidity of Jake's arc? I think that in essence, what I tried to show was that Jake's insecurities, at this point, are not a concrete or immutable thing. He's gotten so much better just within the span of these few seasons, you know, and while he's still got a ways to come, I don't think that there's any one solid reason that he'd doubt himself - ie, "i didn't have a frame of reference growing up" or "my dad turned out terrible so so will I" or even a general insecurity in his own worth. I think it'd be a combination of little things, bits and pieces of each of those that might crop up at inopportune times and leave him stumbling, but ultimately through the support of all these people who he loves so much, it doesn't matter in the end, anyway. blegh, i don't know i just. love this boy. i hope he lives happily ever after.
> 
> \- the character of Mrs Huang has zero appearance in canon and is based on one of the ladies who works at the coffee franchise in the library that I live in (sorry, study in). she's quite a character, and is, indeed, very adept at narrowing eyes. anyway, she's great but she only ever cracks smiles occasionally and i pictured her in my head when I wrote Mrs Huang, who has been in my headcanon for ... a while now? yeah
> 
> \- the scene in the briefing room right at the beginning was inspired by emilybrontay's "this love is in our hearts" single parent au fics, and Sennen is a doll and let me steal the concept. also, the line "teenage Bar Mitzvah DJ" was nicked from nubbins_for_all's "five things that didn't change" fic, because it's a blessed and beautiful sentence and it makes life Better.
> 
> \- funnily enough, while writing this tome (it took me a month, yikes) I was actually studying pregnancy and the stages of development etc in both nutrition and psychology, so I didn't actually have to do a lot of extra Googling, and I sort of shied away from Medical Details and Explanations in general because I didn't want that to be the focus of the fic. somewhat related to that, I also am constantly worried that I didn't focus _enough_ on Amy in the fic, which is why I keep toying with the idea of writing ANOTHER pregnancy fic from her perspective, just because I love Amy Santiago so much and I think that her feelings and perspective on getting pregnant, _especially_ if it wasn't planned, would be really interesting to delve into and unpackage.
> 
> \- because im a sucker for linguistics and everyone in the fic said "choose something meaningful", I'm gonna put it out there that (a) within this fic's canon, Amy got the name Maya from watching the TV show Maya and Miguel with her niece and nephew, and (b), "Maya" can mean "daisy" in Spanish and "spring/brook/life-giving water" in Hebrew, and everyone who's read my SW stories knows that I live for metalinguistic meanings of fictional names.
> 
> \- Maya has a smol brother named Benji who is born two years later and is very, very planned, and they go on adventures to Mrs Huang's bodega and have fun with Holly the cat, who really should be in this fic but it was so big already that I couldn't bring myself to squeeze her in but is the incredible creation of @sonsuelsolei on tumblr and who Jake and Amy adopt about three months after they get married
> 
> \- (Benji's middle name is Raymond) (xoxo)
> 
> \- the title of the fic is from Lucy In The Sky WIth Diamonds, primarily because of the scene in the fic with Karen and her questionable parenting (I'm joking, Karen is literally the world's best Mom and I love her to bits and also think that she'd definitely jam to the Beatles and Abba all the time); but, also, because the feel of that song just generally gelled with the hot, sleepy summer-y feeling that I was trying to conjure within the fic
> 
> \- the headcanon that Jake introduces Captain Holt to superhero comics is honestly something that is indisputable in my mind. Jake's childhood (and adult, lmao) hero is definitely Steve Rodgers and Raymond Holt would 100% appreciate X-Men metaphors and okay this is just. important to me
> 
> \- the squad makes Captain Holt watch the entirety of the star wars franchise in one sitting and it is an Experience, I don't make the rules it happens this way. Charles cries a lot, Jake probably cries too, Amy is the Prequels' #1 fan and also Padme Amidala is her One True Love. anyway, it's emotional. also, Jake wants to be Rey when he grows up
> 
> \- thanks for reading folks!! <3


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